XChat, the standalone app for accessing X’s messaging function, is offered to obtain now for iOS. X first advised it will be stripping direct messaging from X in 2025, however a minimum of for now, XChat is offered within the authentic X app, the net and this new app.
Primarily based on its launch video, the brand new XChat app gives lots of the components of contemporary messaging X had already launched to its chats function, like the power to delete and edit messages, block screenshots and ship disappearing messages. The brand new XChat app additionally helps video and audio calls, and X claims that every one messages despatched with XChat are end-to-end encrypted.
XChat will even be anticipated to be the house of any teams that fashioned round X’s Communities function. The social platform lately introduced that it was retiring Communities on the finish of Could, and advised that XChat’s assist for bigger group chats may very well be a worthwhile different. XChat’s group chats can at the moment have 350 members, however X plans to develop that quantity sooner or later.
Elon Musk’s authentic pitch after he rebranded Twitter as X, was to show the platform into an “all the pieces app,” the place issues like an algorithmic feed, messaging, job boards and even funds might exist side-by-side. A standalone messaging app looks as if the precise reverse of that, however it may also replicate the place X finds itself in 2026. The corporate is now a subsidiary of xAI, and xAI itself is a part of SpaceX. Musk’s push into AI seems to be the going concern, and cloning one thing like WeChat may simply be much less necessary.
